Misfit characters are as popular as headliners

With hundreds of different comic books available each week, sometimes one’s tastes grow with discernment. Take Ed Katschke of Monarch Cards & Comics; though he follows the exploits of more well-known comic characters like Batman and Iron Man, he still keeps an eye out for the potential in misfits. Often, it is oddball heroes and anti-heroes who rise up to give the superstars a run for their money.

This week, Katschke calls out the new Marvel hardcover collection “Punishermax: Kingpin” as an example of the heights — or depths — such characters can reach.

“Writer Jason Aaron and longstanding Punisher artist Steve Dillon give us a hardcore blood and thunder examination of Marvel’s favorite gun-toting vigilante,” he said. “This volume collects the first five-issue story arc from Marvel’s ‘Punishermax’ series, which is published under its Max line and is intended for adult audiences. With equal parts humor and gut-wrenching horror, Aaron takes the Punisher down the darkest roads of crime and human depravity where he can unleash the full power of his blistering vengeance!”

On the DC side of the street, one need look no further than the oddballs that almost single-handedly created the misfit subgenre: the Doom Patrol. Many writers have tried their hand at DC’s band of grotesqueries, but few have succeeded at wrangling them into any sort of popularity.

Katschke calls the Doom Patrol “one of DC’s long-enduring and continuity-laden super-teams,” and is excited about last week’s “Doom Patrol: We Who Are About To Die” collection of the current series’ first six issues.

“Writer Keith Giffen and artist Matthew Clark have crafted a snarky and entertaining look at ordinary people severely damaged by the fictional super-hero world they’ve found themselves in,” he said. “Combining a perfect mixture of humor, whimsy and drama, Giffen has taken a team of super-powered misfits from the 1960s and transformed them into a freewheeling take on modern super-heroics and the price paid to be a hero. Plus, they fight a sentient black hole! How cool is that?”

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 9:55 am and is filed under Comics, Star.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.